Simultaneously yes and no. It is subjective, because the meanings of “socialism” have been varied and vague from the very beginning - even the Communist Manifesto has to deal with this. A political dictionary written back in 1924 had over 40 definitions of the word.
In a community like Hexbear, there’s a smaller range of what “socialism” can mean, but even then it can be a school of thought (ideas), a social movement (praxis), a mode of production, etc. It still needs context or qualification to have a specific meaning.
At what point do we have to admit these [bigoted] people are not socialists and by identifying themselves as much they are actually leading people away from socialism?
They can still be a socialist if they’re repulsive, counterproductive and ignorant. Socialism isn’t an organization. It’s not a political party. It’s not “the good guys”.
Purity games are dangerous to analysis. There is No True Socialist. Marx said some racist trash[1], but it would be ridiculous to say they weren’t a socialist despite that. It also would be ridiculous to pretend that their bigotry was alright and excusable. Again, socialism isn’t a pure, utopian group of only people we like. There are bad socialists in the world.
If you want to claim a bigot isn’t a socialist because you think it will be effective propaganda, then that’s something you can do and it might even be a useful productive thing to do, therefore it’s the right thing to do, but it’s just as much rhetoric as a person falsely claiming “Mamdami is a socialist” because they thought associating a popular populist progressive Democrat with socialism will make the identity of socialism more well-known and accepted in the mainstream. Consider Bernie Sanders clearly espousing reformist capitalism (and imperialism, and Zionism, and … ). They were falsely identified as socialist and it led many thousands of people people towards actual socialist ideas beyond Bernie, like an Overton window. For analytical purposes, I’m very sure Sanders is not a socialist whatsoever, whether they realize it or not. But for rhetorical purposes, in the context of a post-Red Scare USA that largely won’t even consider listening to actual socialist points, taking credit for popular reform clearly has an effect. (To be clear, I’m not endorsing calling Mamdami nor Sanders “socialist”. I’m just describing an opposite example of false association as a rhetorical technique, one I’ve seen other people endorse)
I think it’s a shade of liberal great man theory to think that a figure like sanders has had a positive effect on bringing people towards socialism without acknowledging the many more people who he has kept away from socialism by setting the idea of socialism as liberalism.
Anyone who has a Bernie phase but ultimately moved on to revolutionary theory would have gotten there anyway, Bernie or not. I’m more concerned with the many many more people who reached the point of accepting Bernie’s theories of change and found comfort in staying there in perpetuity because they are designed perfectly to do just that. Defanging revolutionary energy and herding it back towards democratic party, capitalism, and imperialism is not bringing people to socialism, it is bringing them away from it, and that is exactly what Mamdani is doing in turn
Simultaneously yes and no. It is subjective, because the meanings of “socialism” have been varied and vague from the very beginning - even the Communist Manifesto has to deal with this. A political dictionary written back in 1924 had over 40 definitions of the word.
In a community like Hexbear, there’s a smaller range of what “socialism” can mean, but even then it can be a school of thought (ideas), a social movement (praxis), a mode of production, etc. It still needs context or qualification to have a specific meaning.
They can still be a socialist if they’re repulsive, counterproductive and ignorant. Socialism isn’t an organization. It’s not a political party. It’s not “the good guys”.
Purity games are dangerous to analysis. There is No True Socialist. Marx said some racist trash[1], but it would be ridiculous to say they weren’t a socialist despite that. It also would be ridiculous to pretend that their bigotry was alright and excusable. Again, socialism isn’t a pure, utopian group of only people we like. There are bad socialists in the world.
If you want to claim a bigot isn’t a socialist because you think it will be effective propaganda, then that’s something you can do and it might even be a useful productive thing to do, therefore it’s the right thing to do, but it’s just as much rhetoric as a person falsely claiming “Mamdami is a socialist” because they thought associating a popular populist progressive Democrat with socialism will make the identity of socialism more well-known and accepted in the mainstream. Consider Bernie Sanders clearly espousing reformist capitalism (and imperialism, and Zionism, and … ). They were falsely identified as socialist and it led many thousands of people people towards actual socialist ideas beyond Bernie, like an Overton window. For analytical purposes, I’m very sure Sanders is not a socialist whatsoever, whether they realize it or not. But for rhetorical purposes, in the context of a post-Red Scare USA that largely won’t even consider listening to actual socialist points, taking credit for popular reform clearly has an effect. (To be clear, I’m not endorsing calling Mamdami nor Sanders “socialist”. I’m just describing an opposite example of false association as a rhetorical technique, one I’ve seen other people endorse)
https://web.archive.org/web/0/http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1862/letters/62_07_30a.htm ↩︎
I think it’s a shade of liberal great man theory to think that a figure like sanders has had a positive effect on bringing people towards socialism without acknowledging the many more people who he has kept away from socialism by setting the idea of socialism as liberalism.
Anyone who has a Bernie phase but ultimately moved on to revolutionary theory would have gotten there anyway, Bernie or not. I’m more concerned with the many many more people who reached the point of accepting Bernie’s theories of change and found comfort in staying there in perpetuity because they are designed perfectly to do just that. Defanging revolutionary energy and herding it back towards democratic party, capitalism, and imperialism is not bringing people to socialism, it is bringing them away from it, and that is exactly what Mamdani is doing in turn